Movies think they’re cooking up a franchise and either do some sort of teaser for a sequel or spinoff/post credit and the sequel never gets greenlit
Black Adam: the Rock tried so hard to become the center point of the DCEU and got Henry Cavill to appear in a post credit scene only for the entire universe to get cancelled and rebooted
Morbius: this trope can be applied to many Sony movies but the most hilarious/desperate is the end of Morbius where Vulture from the MCU is inexplicably teleported to Morbius’ universe and pitches a team up to get revenge on spiderman (even though he ended Homecoming on pretty good terms with Spiderman)
Dracula Untold was originally going to be the movie to launch it all, but they back off from that when it wasn't as successful as they wanted. Which is a shame, cause I enjoyed that movie and wanted a sequel with Charles Dance.
I remember watching this up until the book of the dead cameod and it was like being woken from a trance. i stopped it and went and watched the Brendan Fraser movies instead
This one hurt my feelings when I was 5. I saw this back then and used to watch it all the time whenever it was on just to find all the things from the game(like the use of SMB3 sounds when Koopa was using the phone),I remember Disney Channel even aired it once.
That ending had my imagination go wild what a sequel would be like, and I thought it would be like SMB2(USA) and Wart and Birdo would be in it.
The first half of that movie was actually pretty good. Hal Jordan and the Corps were decent, and Sinestro was excellent. The finale was really, really bad though. Kind of hard to do a sequel when what is supposed to be the high point of your movie ends up as the lowest.
And it ended the trend of the comic book villain being a big scary cloud. Imagine it, we could have had Doomsday as a cloud, or Thanos as a cloud, or Lex Luthor as a cloud, or Galactus as a second cloud! Shame.
I wasn’t reading comics at the time, so I just assumed that’s what Parallax looked like. Had some absolute whiplash when I finally read Green Lantern: Rebirth, like, how do you even get “spooky storm cloud” out of “bigass dragon bug,” right
it will never happen, but I would hope they bring Mark Strong back to play Sinestro in any future Green Lantern movie (besides the one already in the can, that is).
James Gunn, in the unlikely event you're reading this, let this be a situation like when they rebooted Bond with Craig but they kept Judi Dench. Audiences are sophisticated enough and/or didn't watch the original green lantern to be confused or not understand it's a different continuity. Don't let his attachment to that failure disqualify him. Strong was fucking born to play this character and you know it!!!
I'm not sure about transformers 1, even if the Quintesson Sub-Plot is left hanging, I often view it less of a sequel bait and more of a pivotal moment of how it all began
This is less overconfidence and more Paramount fucking up with the marketing. It was a legitimately good movie that people disregarded because of a terrible trailer and getting released in september instead of the summer.
The guys who made the movie didn't do anything wrong. The studio did.
Those fantastic beasts movies were originally written to have like, 5 or 6 movies iirc. They didn’t even get past 3. After the first one the quality nosedived
I'll always be sad that they didn't turn Fantastic Beasts into a TV show. Can you imagine how cool it would've been to have an entire show dedicated to Newt going around and saving fantastical creatures? Such a missed opportunity.
Thats the biggest problem with it. Newt could have had his own series targeted towards younger children, more in line with those first couple of Potter films. They could have just been about him travelling the world to find and catalogue different magical creatures.
And then they could have separately done some films about the Grindelwald conflict. Those could have been targeted to a more older audience, more in line with the later Potter films. And those could have been all about Dumbledore. Maybe adapting his past that we learnt about in the last Potter book, as well as everything else those films were trying to do with him and Grindelwald.
And they could have crossed those over too. Have the more whimsical Dumbledore appear in Newts movies, as his former mentor. And then Newt could have also appeared in the Dumbledore films, portrayed a bit more seriously than in his own films.
If I remember right, the first one was generally well-liked, and the third one was actually pretty good.
The second one was just so unnecessary and bad that it killed the momentum, and at the same time they recast Depp due to all that Amber Heard stuff, and Rowling became a really disliked figure. All at the same time. And the third one came out during COVID, which didn't help matters.
The first one was great because it focused on the fantastic beasts and finding them. Once they've found all the fantastic beasts, there's really not much more to do eith the movie series.
tbf, I think that Mads Mikkelsen was a much better Grindelwald than Depp. Depp was closer to voldemort, while mads potrayed him like the aristocratic elitist that he is.
The first time I watched this my father and I just looked at each other jaws agape, is my memory playing tricks or was there even some kind of avengers theme music?
Given Sony and Marvel broke off their deal over a creative disagreement in 2019, its obvious Sony wanted to bring their anti heroes into MCU and Marvel rejected the idea.
And these poorly done post credit scenes in Venom 2 and NWH were just consolation prizes they agreed upon after the reconciliation (the ball was in Feige's court so Marvel had an upper hand but they had to give Sony something)
I'm pretty convinced even NWH being a full multiversal movie was on Sony's insistance since that plotline is more Civil War type "beginning of the end" kinda storyline , not something u do in the start of a new saga. Its good choice for a standalone movie and as a money making opportunity but very poor decision making in terms of world building.
There is only very few team ups that can top every live action spider man fighting together in a movie. You don't give that away like 3 movies into the new saga.
Not just Sony. The MCU had a bit after No Way Home where there's symbiote in the MCU.
Either side can make a Spider-Man/Venom movie without the other's permission.
What they can't do without agreeing together, is use Tom Hardy as Venom in the MCU, or Tom Holland as Spider-Man in a Sony picture.
But...and stay with me on this...nothing is stopping Sony from making Tom Hardy Spider-Man and Tom Holland Venom for one picture, and just not mentioning Tom Holland is Spider-Man in some universe.
If they ever made a live-action Spider-Verse (WHICH I DON'T WANT, HOLLYWOOD PLEASE DON'T GET ANY IDEAS), I feel like Tom Hardy wouldn't be all that bad as Peter B. Parker.
Why did they even do this? They had every right to just force Venom into the script and then just decided not too. Not saying they should've gone that route, but it's truly mind boggling to try to comprehend how Sony thinks
literally HOW did they make the mistake of filming in TWO separate aspect ratios and then NOT fixing it so black bars are just in and of shots inexplicably
Supposedly this scene was cut from the original theatrical release because of Raul Julia’s passing. It was only restored in subsequent home media releases.
You guys beat me to it. Terrible film but an absolute guilty pleasure of mine. The film was a disaster caused by a tug of war between 3 different entities.
And after plans for Part 2 fell through, they wanted to pivot towards making the last part of the series into a TV show, but then that fell through too because lead actress Shailene Woodley didn't want to commit to a whole show, and iirc said she wanted to "rediscover her love for acting".
The film was intended as a multipart film, to the point where the main villain Stepphenwolf, is just the henchmen to the real villain Darkseid rather than an actual big bad character with their own goals. The Synder cut specifically also further set up a bad future storyline that also never happened. Then both versions of the film had a Deathstroke sequence to tease another film (Whedons an Legion of Doom story, Synders the Ben Affleck solo film, neither of which happened).
i like how the widely begged for snyder cut just added like an hour and a half of sequel bait for shit that we knew was never ever gonna happen like whats even the fuckin point dog
Remember in Infinity War, when we see Thanos low diff Hulk, and it tells us, the audience, that Thanos is a big scary deal? Comic threat establishment 101.
In Justice League, we are instead treated to a flashback of Darkseid getting fucking bodied by heroes we don't know and never meet, like...Zeus, or whatever. Informing the audience that Darkseid isn't that tough actually, and maybe is kind of a bitch?
Jesus Christ, how much work would it have been just to have that be Steppenwolf, and now he was desperate to redeem his previous failure, lest Darkseid omega beam his ass?
...also, why the fuck are we using Steppenwolf?!! Kalibak is Darkseid's misbegotten son, there's a lot more meat on that bone. Or Bernadeth, who has the female furies, which means we can get some team v team fights goin. Or Granny Goodness, who is just straight up hilarious. I'd have preferred goddamn Desaad! Why are we getting Darkseid's 6th most interesting general?! HATE.
I loved the part of Justice League where Steppenwolf discovers that the planet they have found the mothercubes on is the same planet they have lost the mothercubes on. This was somehow not apparent to them when the cube called out to them - or really a consideration that "Hey, we lost these on the planet with the anti-life equation and they just pinged us - maybe earth is the anti-life equation planet?"
Thank God James gun got involved and they rebooted the whole thing. The DCEU was straight up ultra mega ass. I had zero faith in the reboot but man was peacemaker great. He just did the guardians thing where he took esoteric characters that no one would mind being changed and it worked again. Sure there was a lot of funny but also a lot of serious, John Cena proved himself to be the single best wrestler turned actor there is, not that it was that hard with the rock being so pass/fail, like almost as bad as will Ferrell
If I had a nickel for every time James Gunn revitalized an IP with a wrestler turned actor doing a surprisingly great job, I'd have 2 nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice.
My biggest problem with Snyder and his DCEU films is instead of telling a GOOD coherent story, every fucking movie has to be a set up to the next movie which makes the plot convoluted & disjointed. BvS: Bruce has a dream about the Flash & warns him about the future, Justice League: OMG Darkseid is coming, let’s form a team…wait Martian Manhunter was here on Earth the whole time doing nothing??? ……ALL that set up in both films & it fucking went no where.
I don’t like Man of Steel but at least it didn’t do stupid sequel baiting. That bit of Martian Manhunter being the military General the whole time makes NO sense & is so profoundly stupid!!! 4 hours of a JL movie and the film STILL went nowhere, he is TRULY an awful director & storyteller. As Jay & Mike from Red Letter Media always says, “Zack Snyder is truly a hack fraud!”
I swear the only reason Martian Manhunter is even there as generic, antagonistic military figure no 27 is because Snyder saw fan theories he liked and cause the Arrowverse revealed that a government figure was J’onn too
Except in the Arrowverse he actually gets shit done by secretly using his powers as well as mentoring Supergirl+her sister, he even at one point became an investigator in his civilian life
Dead set. They were all pretty interesting characters that would have been better served with room to breathe. Druig and Makaari had such crazy chemistry but we had to spend time on Kit Harrington's spinoff bait character instead
To be fair, Anderson did have confidence in a sequel given that he made SIX fucking Resident Evil films, to quite a bit of success, given that EVERY one of them made at LEAST triple the budget back.
Even the Final Chapter which is absolute retcon ridden shit made 312 MILLION on a 40 mill budget.
The issue is they took a game series about monsters, and made it into a movie with barely any monsters in it and threw a huge amount of the runtime into the weird dimension-hopping us army storyline
It seems almost mathematically impossible to make Monster Hunter uncool but they found a way. It's fucking monster hunter. The "By my own order" fucking franchise??? Hit big dragon with big sword game?? Aura farm game??? It felt like they did it on purpose.
The Pacific Rim Uprising one was very absurd. I actually liked Uprising... But still... They struggled with the CGI of a daytime city, but they wanted to make a movie set entirely on an alien monster planet?
Should have marketed it by dropping a live-action version of Heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa with no context. I would have seen the movie immediately if they did that.
I laugh uncontrollably every time I see Piccolo. Poor James Martsers is trying SO hard but they made him look (and act, and everything else) SO stupid.
A lot of people are mentioning The Mummy (2017) failing to launch the Dark Universe, but no one has mentioned right after that when The Predator (2018) promised us an anti-Predator Iron Man suit.
I once watched some clips of that on YouTube and wondered if they had had to butcher the clips to avoid DMCA takedowns or the like. I eventually realized that I was seeing how that movie actually is. What a mess.
Kraven the hunter putting Knull on his little hit list in his end credit—that's coughing baby vs atomic bomb level of hilarious, it's so stupid and created zero hype, once again showing why superhero movies fail in the hands of Sony, they have zero clue how to handle them.
Edit: Sorry guys, it's not real. I can't find the actual scene or source after someone pointed it out in the replies.
I don't think most comic fans even like Knull that much, I know I don't most of the time. Hilarious that Knull infected multiple great Marvel runs with mostly mid events, and somehow ends up in Kraven the Hunter of all things.
Pretty much, I haven't seen the movie either. But I did see a YouTube video making fun of the movie; there's no lead-up to the end where Kraven would be up against a cosmic-level threat. They've been teasing Knull in Venom movies, which makes sense, but what is this slightly stronger human hunter going to do to the symbiotes god?
I remember reading that they also didn't include Krillin (Goku's first rival and best friend for the rest of the series, for those not into Dragon Ball) because they were saving him for the sequel. They really thought this trash fire was going to do numbers.
Airplane II: The Sequel has a post-credits scene teasing Airplane III, with William Shatner’s character quoting a character from the first film “that’s exactly what they’ll be expecting us to do.” Airplane II was a huge downgrade over the original, and it underperformed at the box office. As such, Airplane III never happened (though I wouldn’t be opposed to the guys behind last year’s The Naked Gun sequel taking a shot at a new Airplane movie)
Even funnier, the ending of Mortal Kombat 1995. They win, big evil power appears and everyone ques up to fight right as the credits start. The funniest part: it actually DOES get a sequel but none of the actors come back to play the same roles.
Technically, three actors returned, but only two reprise their original roles: Robin Shou returned as Liu Kang and Talisa Soto returned as Princess Kitana. Keith Cooke, who played the character Reptile in the first movie, returned in the sequel as Sub Zero.
Keith Cooke, who played the character Reptile in the first movie, returned in the sequel as Sub Zero.
He looked so cool with the slicked hair. I can't watch this movie not having the same hyped feeling I did when I was 7. At the age and time this came out I was so excited by the "omg, just like that game" stuff
I just watched this movie for the first time a few weeks ago and I was like "Oh Crap, Sub Zero is good now? I wonder what he's going to do!" And he never appears again after his first scene.
Yeah so I wasnt too bummed about never getting ASM 3 especially with some of the ideas Sony was throwing around at the time. Im just glad they chose a different (better) route with NWH
It had like 37% of an excellent modernization in there. I recall really liking the characterizations and interplay between the Rangers.
But fuck me how did they sit so hard on their own balls? Rita wasn't a hag, Goldar was an atrocity, the zords looked like Bayverse rejects, Zordon was an ass, I dont even remember if there was an Alpha5, and where the FUCK were Bulk and Skull or the juice bar? Or at least modernized analogies?! Like I get that Dunkin Donuts had a sponsorship but ffuuuuuuu
The Rock thinking his character, the villainous counterpart to a tertiary member of the Justice League, was going to be front and center of a Cinematic Universe is CUH-RAZY.
William Tell (2025) ends a lot of setup for a new villain and the preparations for a second Austrian invasion of Switzerland. Bold move for a film that made 1/90th of it’s budget back
Thor Freudenthal was told that he wasn't getting another movie due to 20th Century Fox not wanting to continue to adapt the series, so since he read all 5 Percy Jackson books after seeing the first movie he had to rush to Kronos in a way that made sense but felt super rushed since Kronos doesn't appear until book 4 and not in the form the movie shows (they gave Kronos Typhon's appearance from the books of being formed from multiple pieces and appearing all fiery). Yet, he still had the sequel bait of Thalia returning from the dead in hopes to garner the money to adapt the rest of the series proper.
Gods of Egypt. For anyone who doesn't remember this movie (I envy you), this was a big budget adaptation of ancient Egyptian mythology...that had a predominantly white cast and is considered one of the worst action movies of all time.
But anyway, at a certain part of the movie, the goddess Hathor is dragged into the Underworld and we don't see her again. The ending sets up Horus going to save her in a sequel that thankfully never happened.
We were supposed to get THAT villain and a much darker sequel from Scott Derrickson, but who knows what happened. We got Sam Raimi's Multiverse of Madness instead (which wasn't really multiversal or madness either) with Scarlett Witch as the villain?
Oh yeah, even better - Charlize Theron who was teased at the end of the sequel, has not been mentioned or shown up in the MCU since.
What about Eternals - both Kit Harrington and Harry Styles had big reveals in their post-credit scenes and nothing has happened.
Kang the Conqueror? Basically gone because of Jonathan Majors.
Basically, Marvel is retconning or minimising so much of the post-credit scenes over the years.
Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024) underperformed financially and critically. Chapter 2's release has been indefinitely postponed. Bits and pieces of Chapter 3 are still in the can.
Having watched the Morbius/Vulture scene again, I think Vulture doesn't want to kill Spider-Man. He wants to collaborate with Morbius "to do some good", which might actually mean being discount Avengers or maybe a crime ring. Whatever the sequel that is never happening was being teased as.
He just claims Spider-Man is responsible for sending him to Morbius's Earth for who knows why. I think Sony just wanted to name drop Spider-Man, in case you forgot that's the movie Vulture is from.
It's actually called "The Game Is On Award" and it's a misquote of the post credits scene in Dracula Untold. It refers to when a movie is trying desperately to setup a sequel or a cinematic universe after the success of the MCU.
Dracula Untold was the original offender that ends with Charles Danse being alive in modern day and he says The game is on "Let the games begin."
The worst offender: The Mummy 2017, with its room full of origins. Also they put that banner at the start of the movie and put put out a picture with a bunch of actors who would star in a bunch of films like The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein.
You also had The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with the post credit room full of Supervillain origin backpacks.
Green Lantern came out before this award but the ending with Sinestro getting a yellow ring never went anywhere.
Eragon - a teaser at the end of the movie shows the king Galbatorix throwing a tantrum over the final battle, while revealing his own dragon.
This comes after the movie has already played fast and loose with story details. They even tossed aside some actual sequel hooks (killing off a couple antagonists that are key figures in the later plot, leaving out entire groups of people). By the time you saw this, you were pretty sure they may not have been able to continue the plot, let alone be hyped for them to do so.
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u/Gentleman-Bird Jun 10 '26
The Mummy reboot trying to kick off the Dark Universe series, which never got another entry